Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I’m back from a much needed blogging break, and I’m sharing a delicious meal that Andy and I made a week or so ago. We didn’t follow a recipe, so if you’d like to recreate, just follow the steps – it’s really easy!! This is a red Thai curry and was easily the best thing we’ve ever made together. It was so tasty and a lot more fun than just ordering it at a restaurant. It took us a while to make it, but I’m sure it will go faster the second time we try to make it. Also, my stove is in a very awkward position, so only one person can use it at a time.

First, we chopped everything we needed: yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper, a hot pepper, eggplant, tofu for me, chicken for Andy, and we got out a whole lot of spices!

I pressed the tofu and sprinkled them lightly with flour. I sautéed them with olive oil until they were nice and crispy. Andy chopped up a chicken breast and cooked the pieces until they were fully cooked as well.

We set the tofu and chicken aside and sautéed the veggies until they were cooked, but the peppers were still crispy.

Next up was the curry sauce. Things got a little crazy with my wok, so I don’t have many pictures. I sautéed some store-bought red curry paste with olive oil until it deepened in color. This cooked very quickly, so I recommend starting on low heat. I slowly added 1 1/2 cans of light coconut milk (plus some water – it was pretty thick) to the paste. This tasted good, but store-bought red curry paste definitely needs some help, and it isn’t spicy at all. We added red pepper flakes, lots of lime juice, sriracha sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, and a couple drops of sesame oil. After it simmered for a few minutes, it was getting seriously delicous!!

After we meticulously adjusted the sauce to taste, in went the veggies!

It was pretty hard at this point not to stick my head in the wok and eat everything inside.

Just to be extra indulgent, we popped frozen Trader Joe’s garlic naan in the oven. Perfect for sauce dipping!

The finished product!! Somewhere deep down there is a small mound of brown basmati rice, topped with the curry, tofu, basil leaves, and crushed peanuts.

This was sooo amazing! Pretty involved, but totally worth every minute…and even though it takes a while, it’s still really easy! Definitely keep another lime on hand to add more lime juice – it tasted so good. The basil and peanuts were wonderful too…the toppings definitely brought it up to restaurant quality curry…yum!!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

So the past few days I’ve been kind of anti-internet. It’s been pretty nice actually! Aside from a few clicks of the stumble-upon button before bed, I’ve been doing other exciting things such as checking out a new brewery in the area and making the perfect tofu! I made this tofu yesterday without any plan. I was starving and without much of a variety of groceries…which I have to force myself to go buy today. You know how tofu dishes in restaurants have super crispy tofu that seem to have a crust on them? I wanted that! Usually the tofu I make is browned, but without that great variety of texture. Anyway, I started out by cubing the tofu and getting as much water as possible out. (I really need to invest in a tofu press!) Next, I sprinkled the tofu with a light dusting of flour. I don’t know where I’ve been, but this is definitely genius! So that’s it…flour. All these years I’ve been sautéing flourlessly, when I could have been experiencing delicious crispy cubes of tofu!

Ahh look at that beautiful golden crust! I sautéed the cubes in a bit of olive oil and sesame oil on medium until all sides were golden. It was pretty hard not to eat them all out of the pan at this point.

I went with a red curry sauce at this point, but really any direction is possible. Simply dip them in hot sauce or peanut sauce? Yeah! I made the sauce by cooking a couple tablespoons of red curry paste and adding a little bit of light coconut milk (don’t worry Andy there’s lots for Wednesday!). Red curry paste isn’t very exciting by itself (or at least the brand that I buy) so I added srirachi sauce, a few splashes of fish sauce and soy sauce, black pepper, and garlic powder. I would have added red pepper flakes if I remembered.

I added the tofu back in the pan, stirred around until hot, and done! Spectacular! Definitely restaurant-worthy. The outside crust held up very well to the sauce. No sogginess! Next time I’m thinking a light and summery lemongrass-basil sauce would be great.

If you’re a normal person, you might eat the tofu with a vegetable and serve it over rice. If you’re like me, you’ll eat an entire block of tofu with a glass of milk and call it a meal. Delicious.